


How do you say goodbye

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Luke, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mother-Son Relationship, Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Short One Shot, Tribute To Carrie Fisher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 11:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9180391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Somebody later tells Poe that he holds on for 81 hours. It felt like 81 seconds.





	

Poe’s fingers have a cramp in them. It’s not a small cramp, not the kind of mild ache you get from holding a padd too long, the annoying seize from gripping a stylus too tight. Not even the burning ache from pressing a trigger down, over and over and over again. 

No, it’s the quiet kind of burning fire that Poe usually only experiences three days into a stint with a First Order interrogation chair. Which is odd, because there are no members of the First Order anywhere that he can see. 

Somehow, incredibly, that makes some small part of him sad. 

Poe’s fingers twitch. He bites down harder on his already shredded lip, and tries not to scream. 

00

It took Rey four days to follow a map to Luke Skywalker in the end, and one of those was spent climbing. It would almost seem ridiculous, in a galaxy so vast, that the most mysterious and hidden figure in existence was only three and a bit days away, all that time. 

It would feel a bit ridiculous, if those days didn’t seem like the longest distance ever right now. 

00

They were training when Luke felt it. He dropped a rock on his own head, so great was his stumble. Rey could almost feel it, something around the edges, something black and ominous and inevitable, something sad. 

It’s the first time she ever sees Luke Skywalker cry. It will be far from the last. 

00

Poe was in the hangar when it happened, decks away, minutes apart at a dead run. He reaches the medbay just as the doctors converge on the stretcher, alarms blaring, people shouting. Somehow, in all that chaos, he worms his way in next to the stretcher, grabs the nearest hand he can find, and holds on as hard as he can. 

Poe has been her pilot for eleven years, known her his whole life, but it still feels wrong somehow, that he is the one the doctors finally sit in front of, finally somberly say “We’re so very sorry” to. Through it all, he doesn’t let go of her hand. 

00

Poe doesn’t count it, but someone later tells him he held on for 81 hours. 

It felt like barely 81 seconds to him. 

00

Poe’s fingers are cramping, the kind of deep, torturous ache that will never quite fade, no matter how much he massages the joints. 

He has been keeping his vigil for three and a bit days when Luke Skywalker comes crashing into the room, looking nothing like a heroic figure of legend, and every bit like a man whose only sister is dying. 

Poe holds on for 81 hours, until his fingers are long past numb. 

He holds on until a trembling hand finds his shoulder, metal digits curling with infinite gentleness around his spasming fingers, holding on with him. 

He holds on until the alarms go silent, under the world dims a little bit more, forever more. 

He holds on until she slips away. And then he holds on some more. 

Because nobody ever quite knows how to say goodbye.

And nobody ever taught him how to let go.


End file.
